VietNamNet Bridge – The increasing number of people using smartphones to read online news is making life difficult for print media outlets, heard a recent seminar in Hanoi.

A promotion girl shows off a local Q-Mobile smartphone. Print media outlets are feeling the pinch of the increasing number of people using smartphones to read online news.

The seminar held by Vietnam News Agency attracted the participation of 250 leaders and reporters of many news organizations.

Speakers at the seminar on smartphones and modern media shared the point that smartphones had been more affordable and this had led to a sharp increase in the number of smartphone users. This, however, has piled more pressure on print media organizations and forced them to restructure operations to survive.

In addition to print and online media, news organizations have also had to offer their own apps to retain their readers as many of them have been switching to the Internet for free news.

In South Korea, the number of people opting for online news sites has surged, especially since 2009 when smartphones became popular in that country.

Bae Myung Bok of South Korea’s Chungang daily newspaper, told the seminar that media and television firms were facing rising pressure from mobile devices.  The booming popularity of smartphones has pushed print media into one of the toughest periods in recent history.

Kwon Tae Sun, editor-in-chief of Huffington Post Korea (HPK), said the number of people reading news via smartphones and computers accounted for 40% and 60% respectively. But the proportion of those reading HPK’s stories via mobile devices is up to 70%.

HPK also kept an eye to young readers, who use social networks to share news they read in order to have more interactions with readers on Facebook and Twitter, Kwon shared.

In Vietnam, there are 31 million Internet users and around 17 million mobile phones were sold last year. Le Quoc Minh, editor-in-chief of Vietnamplus, said these figures showed the possibility of smartphone use and mobile news readers to snowball in Vietnam.

In recent years, many media outlets have invested much in mobile apps for their news websites to cash in on opportunities from mobile media which is forecast to become a dispensable trend in the years to come.

According to speakers at the seminars, media organizations tend to produce short-form news stories together with images and sounds. And writers are not bound by traditional styles and many of them work as bloggers.

Source: SGT